Tag: kyiv

This cute café (part of a national chain) was completely in the Christmas mood when I visited. This was great for vegans, because it meant there were some vegan cakes! Let me explain.

Pumpkin-mandarine cake and hummus pie

In Orthodox Christianity there are several fasting (Pist in Ukrainian) periods, during which specific animal products (like meat, milk and butter) are not consumed. One of these periods happens to be before Orthodox Christmas, when I visited Kyiv. Technically the original idea of these fasts is to abstain from tasty foods such as cakes which often include butter and milk… but I am not going to complain.

Liquid-y dark chocolate to be eaten with a spoon

During my stay in Kyiv I visited Zolotoi Dukat twice. As mentioned there were some special additions to the menu for Christmas; an apple pie, a pumpkin-mandarine pie and a hummus salty pie (I believe the apple pie is also on the standard menu).

On the standard menu there are several vegan snacks, like dark chocolate and nuts. The chocolate is liquid and thick, a bit bitter but nice.

Matcha latte with coconut milk

It being a café they have of course coffee and other drinks, and several speciality teas. Additionally they have coconut milk. I am personally not that fond of coconut milk with coffee but in the Matcha latte I tried it worked very well!

This small stand in a large shopping mall serves completely vegan snacks and drinks! Anahata Fine Food focuses on tasty, clean (e.g. no added sugars) food which does not harm the environment & its inhabitants. Sounds good to me!

You can find coffee with several milk alternatives here, vegan milk shakes, smoothies, etc. Food-wise they offer sandwiches, lavash with hummus and tofu and the like. There’s also sugar-free/naturally-sweetened pastries like chocolate and cake.

Coffee and soy latte

I tried a coffee with soy milk, a chocolate and a piece of ginger cake. The cake was not very ginger-y, I have to say. It was sweetened with dried fruits, such as figs, and also contained nuts. The coffee was made Turkish style, which I noticed is common around these parts. The chocolate was good, a bit too dark for me personally!

Slice of sugar-free ginger cake

Anahata fine food is focused mostly on take-out, but there are a few tables to sit as well. A great place for a quick snack or coffee!

!! 2019 update. I went to another location of Pan Karpat, and I was told the vereneki are not vegan (anymore). The deruny can be made without egg upon request, but the standard version is not vegan.

If you follow me on Instagram (also called goingoutvegan, if you want to take a look) you may have noticed I have recently visited Kyiv. Contrary to what people might think, there are a lot of opportunities to eat vegan! For my dear readers I have taken it upon myself to sample as much food as I possibly could, so expect some reviews in the weeks to come 🙂

Pan Karpat – Carpathian Cuisine

Let’s start with a traditional Ukrainian restaurant: Pan Karpat. This is a chain of Carpathian restaurants. They serve a lot of Ukrainian staples, like borscht (beet soup), vareniki (dumplings with filling), and of course potatoes and meat in varying forms. The menu is both in Ukrainian and English. We wanted to try several different dishes, so we had grilled vegetables, vareniki with potatoes and deruny (“potato pancakes”).

Potato-stuffed vareniki! Cute dish, too

Vareniki are not always vegan, they are sometimes made with kefir or egg. However, the potato-stuffed vareniki at Pan Karpat are vegan! They can be served with a few different sauces (like mushroom sauce) for a small surcharge, but none of the sauces are vegan. We also got some grilled vegetables, served on a bed of dough. They were tasty, but maybe a bit oily.

Grilled veggies

There is also a large version of the deruny, which has egg, but the small ones are vegan. They were nice and crispy, but needed some salt. Normally sour cream would be served with everything, as per Ukrainian tradition.

Deruny!

Also for dessert there was a vegan option: vareniki with cherries. They were just a bit sour, not too sweet. I really like them!

Drink-wise, apart from the usual suspects like coffee, the menu contains several interesting drinks like Carpathian teas, Georgian and Ukrainian wines, and local non-alcoholic speciality drinks. Initially I was mostly interested in trying the uzvar, which is a stewed fruit drink, but the one served at Pan Karpat contains honey. We opted for the kompot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kompot) which is similar but not honey-sweetened. After we had some Carpathian tea.